…’fess up time… in a different life, this ol’ Scots Jurassic scribbler was once a banker… a Trainee Master of the Financial Universe… I skulked around as a manager of treasury departments and headed foreign exchange dealing rooms for a coupla decades and threw in some service for another coupla decades as a customer-facing senior executive as well… however, it seems so loooooong ago, now, Mabel… and sadly, as most of us have also experienced, things ain’t what they used to be… I don’t wanna sound like the old generation ‘we did it so much better’ kinda thing, but let’s consider a few issues here: first up, there’s a permanent place in a burning hell awaiting the genius who devised the ‘customer call centre’ concept, where yer first response is a mechanical voice menu that takes yeez on a ten-minute (minimum) merry-go-round, waiting to talk to a ‘real’ person… the limbo message is usually of the order of ‘your call is important to us’ …please hang on, all our agents are busy chatting with much more important people than you, but we’ll try to get to you before you lose the will to live… second issue, when yeez give an online instruction to remit funds to another bank… they debit your account IMMEDIATELY, but the funds get credited into the beneficiary account days afterward… so who’s getting the benefit of the float?… and thirdly, as for the fees and charges… for a simple internet click yeez can pay anywhere up to US$4o equivalent, ‘handling charge’...who did the handling?… yerself!

…and fourthly, just try to deposit any amount to yer account more than the cost of a sandwich and they ply yeez with an anti-money laundering inquisition about yer source of funds… I kinda doubt that hundreds of millions of we customers are secretly international drug barons and money-launderers… and fifthly, the wonderful ‘annual service charge’ for having yer own money sitting with them… if only the WURD‘service’ meant sum’thing real… I’m driven to consider keeping all my bank stash in the old-fashioned Scots bank… the mattress… if any of yeez wanna deposit in there with me, my service charges schedule is available upon request… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!

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13 responses to “…where have all the bank services gone?… long time passing…”

Just to add a little something. When I was a wee, little lad (somewhere around the split of the Beatles) Banks ou to bring all the little money you saved over the year and put it on your savings account. You even got a little present for doing so. A game, a toy, something for school. Happened every year the 31st of October. Today if you come with the little money and want to exchange against something you could use or put it on your savings account. YOU HAVE TO F…ING pay for it. Or they simply refuse to take the money. And they are necessary for the system and when they played to risky with someone else’s money, they break down and we have to save them. Luv it